The House We Were Going To Fill

You were not buying a house. Everybody thinks you were buying a house.

You were buying the long room at the back with the doors that fold open, because you had counted, and with the doors open and the table out onto the grass there was room for all of them at once.

All of them. Your sister who has been in another state for eleven years. Your brother and the three kids you see at Christmas and at funerals. Your aunt, who raised half of you, and who has not been under the same roof as your mother since a misunderstanding nobody can now remember the details of.

You had worked out where people would sleep. You had worked out that if two of the young ones went on the floor in the small room it would hold everyone for four nights.

You had not told anybody that, because it sounds like a lot to put on a building.

And then the offer went the other way, and you said to your husband that it was a shame, and that there would be others, and you carried on putting the groceries away.

And the thing you have not said, to him or to anyone, is that what you actually lost this week was a Thanksgiving.

What that long room was for

I want to name the size of it, because I do not think it has been named yet.

There is a reason the loss went further in than a property loss should go, and the reason is that this was never a search for square footage. It was a search for a room where the people you love could be in the same place at the same time.

That is not house hunting. That is an act of repair.

You are grieving a repair that did not happen, and wanting your scattered family gathered has never once been the same as being materialistic about a house. It is written in Psalm 147 that He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds, and the Holy Spirit is the one who knows exactly which wound that long room was for.

And here is why nobody around you understands the size of your face this week. They saw a listing. They did not see the seating plan, or the four nights, or your aunt and your mother in the same room for the first time since before the children were born.

You have carried this family for a long while. You are the one who remembers birthdays, who drives, who makes the calls that nobody else will make. And you found a room where all of that might finally stop being your job and start being just an afternoon.

You have been the one holding this family together across three states, and carrying people has never once made your own disappointment small. Psalm 147 says He gathereth together the outcasts and heals the broken hearted in the same breath, and the Spirit of God does not put those two into separate departments.

Gathering and healing in one verse

Here is the passage, and I want you to see what sits beside what.

He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names. (Psalm 147:3, King James Version)

Look at the order of the psalm around that line. A few verses earlier it says the Lord doth build up Jerusalem and gathereth together the outcasts of Israel. Then immediately: He healeth the broken in heart.

The gathering and the healing are next to each other, in that order, on purpose.

Whoever wrote that understood something you understand in your body and have never had words for. Scattered people carry a specific wound, and the wound closes when they are in one place. That is not sentimentality. That is how God describes His own work.

You were reaching for something the psalm itself puts side by side, and a longing to see your people gathered has never once been a small or private ambition. The written word sets the gathering of the scattered directly beside the healing of the broken hearted, and the Holy Spirit is the one who authored that order.

And then look at the next line, which seems to change the subject and does not.

He telleth the number of the stars. He calleth them all by their names.

The same God who counts a sky full of stars and knows every one by name is the God who counts your family. He knows there are nineteen of you. He knows which two have not spoken. He was not confused about what that room was for.

You have a God who counts people and calls them by name, and no plan of yours for a family has ever once gone unnoticed by Him. The Spirit of God is the one carrying that knowledge into this week, and Psalm 147 is where you can go and see it written down.